In general you expect a new version of Delphi around August, this year is going to be different, Delphi XE4 is coming next week.

I just heard that next week Embarcadero is going to announce Delphi XE4, which is part of RAD Studio XE4 and will include C++Builder XE4 and HTML5 Builder.

An important change initiated last year related to Prism (Delphi for .NET) will affect RAD Studio this year, I think you won’t see Prism included in RAD Studio, of course REM Objects continue to develop their compiler and integration with Visual Studio, so you will have order directly from them.

What’s new in Delphi XE4?

Delphi XE4 will bring Embarcadero’s new ARM compiler and will allow Delphi developers to compile FireMonkey apps to iOS devices at this point. The project around this new compiler started years ago, I had the opportunity to talk about this project with many Delphi developers, so the new compiler is really new and a beginning that will allow to move Delphi language much easier to other platforms, as you already heard Embarcadero is already promising Android support and it suppose to come soon.

The iOS support is going to be better them what you saw in XE2 and you are expecting something way better. A very important point is the focus on iOS, trying to make everything you use for Windows available on iOS is not the way to go, so in XE4 you will see what is specific for iOS when developing for iOS and this is good.

Of course Embarcadero will promote FireDAC as a new feature in XE4, even it came recently on XE3 still a good point to talk about this, since FireDAC is way better them dbExpress. I blogged about that recently and you can read here.

I believe you will see InterBase for iOS on this release, even you already have SQLite on iOS devices I see a lot of space for InterBase on iOS, especially for developers that need protect their data on mobile devices.

Upgrade and pricing

Embarcadero will release all the SKUs and upgrade paths. Early this year they mention about to release iOS support as add-on, maybe you will be able to buy just this piece, let’s wait and see.

There is a webinar scheduled for next Wednesday April 24th and it will show this new release.

I will be back in the following days and will share my comments about this release.

I just published an article covering What’s new in Delphi XE4 after the official launch, you can find that here.

We made the decision a few months back that Delphi development was no longer our only direction and that in future we’d be making use of RemObjects tools. Oxygene and Hydra for moving our windows offering forward and Oxygene for iOS (when out of beta) for Apple development.

It’s telling that we’ve already made that decision when XE4 with iOS support is imminent and Oxygene for iOS is still in beta. It will come as no surpirse if Prism is no longer sold as part of RAD studio given the strategic multi platform direction of Embarcadero and the conflicts that brings to the table.

There have been too many mis-steps and lack of quality by Embarcadero over recent years for us to stick with them for the long term. We’ve been a Delphi only ISV for over a decade and personally I’ve been with Delphi since V1 and turbo pascal since college. Over the years, quality has waxed and waned, but since the extemely protracted 64 bit debarcle (and it’s continuing issues), it has become increasingly difficult to defend Delphi within the company. The continued shrinking of quality 3rd party providers (especially compared to .NET) is also a large concern.

I hope they find a market for XE4, but I don’t hold out any great hopes for it. Delphi will still form the backbone of our offering for the next few years, but will no longer be the tool of choice for new work.

Pretty much an identical story with me. Delphi user forever, current projects will be mostly maintained in Delphi but new projects are with Oxygene.

I’m disillusioned with the way Embarcadero have [not] developed Delphi, and the stuff coming out of RemObjects is simply stunning. We switched Delphi to pro only and buy Oxygene direct from RemObjects anyway now.

Embarcadero’s loss of our SA revenue is RemObjects’ gain so I doubt RemObjects will suffer unduly, I would rather buy from them anyway. I bet they don’t even have a fax machine (paying SA to Embarcadero in the UK requires this!)

We , too moved to Visual Studio and left Embarcadero aka Delphi. The tools are full of bugs and their upgrade path is not very consumer friendly.
Since D2009 with initial Unicode support I’m missing breaking new features.Why is just iOS supported? There is Android as well as Windows RT. From what we know about XE4, iOS is EMBC’s preferred mobile OS – very short-sightened, IMO.

Stop supporting Embarcadero Delphi Prism think the way would be the opposite, making a language such as Delphi Prism to be the norm, would serve as the environment. NET and the other, something that Rem Object doing right. For now we can develop for iOS with him, and android. (Using Visual Studio